In search of the family

FUTURE   Well firstly, I did it:- 52 stories in 52 weeks in 2021, some weeks were harder than others but over half of the posts were stories of my ancestors lives and about half again relate to the social history within those lives. Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow for providing the prompts for these posts, they have certainly concentrated the mind. So where will I go with my family history story in 2022. I have signed up for next years 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, but I thought I would only post on weeks relevent to ancestors who's stories I have yet to write up . I see, however, that there is now a monthly theme and this may be the way I go with writing up these stories. Nevertheless there are many more people with stories to write about and hopefully others ready to be discovered. Having committed to writing weekly posts, it has encouraged me to write regularly. One big advance, will hopefully be, that I can perhaps move further forward with my Mum's birth family. We know her mothers...

  MUM'S CHRISTMAS MEMORIES. For this weeks post, I thought I would share a couple of my Mum's childhood memories of Christmas, just after the war. One of those memories was the Christmas she awoke to find one of her presents was a cabinet her father had made for her. Her father was a carpenter by trade, at the time working for the Bank of Egypt in London. She was delighted with this, alongside the other gifts she had received. But when her parents joined her in they pointed out that there was another present on the shelf of the cabinet. When she opened this it was her first watch. Christmas was an extended family affair and on Christmas Day, Mum, her parents and her Grandfather, Charles William Howe (1876-1957) were joined by her mother's sister and husband, Alice and Joe Scott (Alice Howe and Joseph Scott) and their 2 children Robert Anthony (b.1937), known as Tony and Lavinia Ruth(b.1939) known as Lyn or Vinia. Her father's friend Herbert Alexander Gray known as Dick ...

  LINES This is another week when I was unsure of what to write to interpret the theme, but after consideration, I decided to write about, where I 'draw the line' when writing about my my Ancestors. Some of us have family stories which can be unsavoury or difficult to write or read, does this mean we should not write about them? I am somewhat perturbed at recent global events that have suggested the rewriting, erasing or changing of history, because they are unsavoury in todays social climate. I do not countenance much of what occurred historically, but to sanitise or erase it does not allow us to learn from past failures and mistakes.   But to counter that arguement, that's all well and good but if these circumstances had touched my life would I be so arbitary in this statement. So this is where I draw the line. If the event  occurred in the dim and distant past, I would relay the story in a hopefully sensitive way. However, as I have discovered within my own family...

  HOMEMADE This theme made me smile, because of my immediate memory is of my Mum and her knitting needles. She was a prolific knitter, when we were growing up and I even remember her knitting on the beach. Look at any family photo's of us as a family growing up and at least 1, if not all of us will be wearing one of Mum's Jumpers/Cardigans etc. Even today, aged 81, she still knits, although for short periods only as various arthritic pains occur if she overdoes the knitting. This photo of my Grandparents, Doris Ruth nee Howe 1908-2005 and Frederick Samuel Carden 1908-1986 on their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1985, shows my Nan wearing a knitted skirt and cardigan and my Grandad a knitted pullover, all knitted by my Mum. As a secondary nod to 'Homemade'. I thought I would add a note about my other hobby:- hand embroidery and as the homemade face masks I embroidered to send to friends for Christmas 2020. The top mask is a slightly different design as the recipient suffe...